Infusion
by ShinMarsDragon
Summary: That makes Terra look at her, eyes dark and strange, and before Celes can move Terra's there, pressed up against Celes closer than anyone's ever been, her hands digging into Celes' shoulders, her lips against Celes' ear. "Do you ever want to fly?"


Written for cricket_aria/person4 for Trick or Treat Exchange 2015. Original on AO3.

* * *

Celes sits straight-backed, feet flat on the ground, arms resting accessible beside her. Cid fusses around her, checking meters and gauges, making imperceptible adjustments, chattering idly all the while. "I was thinking we'd start with this lady here. She has powerful ice magic, and a bit of healing as well. You'll be your own apothecary, Celes, how about that?"

She doesn't look at the creature in the tube right in front of her, the strange figure that resembles a woman sculpted in ice. The creature presses hands against the glass as if to escape, but hopelessly and without strength. There's nothing it can do against the Empire's technology.

Eventually Cid runs out of things to say. The thick needles go into Celes' arms and she _doesn't_ whimper or cry out, she is a cadet who will be a proud soldier of the Empire and will _not_ flinch at pain, this will make her stronger -

She watches the glimmering power slide slowly down the tubes from the ice creature's cage and to her chair, flickering and faceting in the light with a breathless detachment. It cools the air around her legs as it creeps upward, and she doesn't flinch when it reaches her arms.

The ice pours into her veins.

* * *

After the third time, she doesn't pass out.

* * *

After the fifth time they have to stop. "Just for a while, Celes," Cid reassures her. "Your body needs time to adjust and heal. Any more infusions right now wouldn't be safe."

Needle marks track up her arms in deep lines and she hears half-whispers in the breeze. She isn't sure Cid knows about the latter. She doesn't tell him, just nods and finds a yard to practice in.

It's exhilarating. There's ice in her blood now, flowing through every part of her, and with just a gesture she can bury chips of ice a handspan deep in the targets from across the yard. It's magic, _true_ magic, a miracle that hasn't been since since the War of the Magi. Celes draws ice from her fingertips until her head is ringing, until her arms fall limp at her sides, until all she can do is laugh with the joy of it. She wonders if this is what being drunk feels like.

One of the dummies creaks and tilts, overbalanced from the weight of the ice piercing its chest, and Celes throws one last flechette to send it crashing to the ground. The rest barely stand, a squadron destroyed in less than ten minutes. Pride swells Celes' chest to nearly bursting.

There's the sound of footfalls behind her and Celes turns, wanting someone to share in her glory. "Look! I did that! I did that with real magic!"

The girl says nothing. She's thin and ill-dressed, with tangled green hair hiding her face. Celes dismisses her as one of the low servents that scurry near-invisible around the capital, until the girl clasps her hands beneath her chin.

When she spreads them, all the dummies burst into flame.

Celes' first thought is a childish: _Without even trying! That's not FAIR!_

But it's soon overtaken by a feeling that near drowns her in its power: _She's just like me._

* * *

After two weeks Cid lets her back into the lab for another infusion. It's routine by now, the chair, the tubes, the ice woman crouched at the bottom of her cage, the sharp needle pricks. Cid swears there's more power he can give her, so she waits patiently for the familiar liquid frost slip away from the Esper and into her.

It's hard to resist tapping her fingers on the armrests as she waits through the familiar, breathtaking cold, the slow sensation of being frozen from the inside-out, the half-heard chants and cries of an unknown tongue. She's done this before.

There's something deeper now, a power she can't quite touch. Celes frowns and tries to grasp at it, but it slides away from her. There's power there, something even stronger than what she can do now, but she can't touch it. It's vexing.

She lets her head loll back and waits. Maybe she'll have a better grasp of it when the run of infusions is done. The ice woman in front of her is curled up on herself, trying to hide behind her hands.

Celes can't quite decide if she looks thinner than she did when all this started, or why the idea bothers her so much.

* * *

"All right, here's another one!" Celes throws the ball into the air, timing her ice to hit as soon as it begins to fall. It bounces to the left, only to be met with Terra's flames that send it flying to where Celes can hit it again, and on and on and on.

Celes justifies it to Cid and the officers as being 'a drill' and 'training to better control our magic', but really, really she just wants to be with Terra, and this is the only way they can see each other. She has no idea where Terra goes after training, no idea who's responsible for her or how she's being educated, but she's allowed to meet Celes here and that's all Celes can ask for. A blast of flame engulfs the ball and burns it black, sending little flecks of ash spinning into the air until Celes sends an ice lance right through the middle and the entire thing explodes in a hail of cinders.

Celes ducks her head against the debris and lets out a soft giggle, pitched quiet so the soldiers lined up against the wall won't hear. She picks up another ball, feeling the weight and heft of it in her hands, ready to throw. "Ready, Terra?"

But Terra's not looking at her, waiting for the next toss. She's still staring at the smudged sky, like nothing else exists for her.

"Terra?" Celes asks. "Pay attention, we have five more to get through and we have to be done before sword practice. Are you ready?"

That makes Terra look at her, eyes dark and strange, and before Celes can move Terra's there, pressed up against Celes closer than anyone's ever been, her hands digging into Celes' shoulders, her lips against Celes' ear. "Do you ever want to fly?"

Celes can't make sense of the words at first. "Fly? In the air?" She looks past Terra's hair to try and judge if the soldiers are suspicious of their movements, but they seem happy to leave the 'little witches' alone. "Ah, well, Professor Cid has friends that are working on flying machines, making an airforce. Do you want to be a pilot?" It's a silly thing to ask and a sillier thing to hope for. They're never going to be allowed to be anything but Magitek Knights.

"No." Terra's voice is firm, firmer than Celes has ever heard her before. Her breaths stir Celes' hair. "To _fly_."

It's all too strange for Celes to take anymore, and she pushes Terra away. "You can't fly without a machine," she says, in the crisp, confident tones of one who got to attend Professor Ghast's aerodynamics lectures. "Stop daydreaming, we have drills to finish."

Terra nods and steps back to her accustomed place. But when her eyes follow the ball to the sky, it doesn't seem like she sees it at all.

* * *

They've gotten as much as they can out of the ice woman, Cid says, so he's switching her to a new Esper. Celes nods and settles herself to the routine, eyes barely flicking over the small cat in boots floating in front of her. He moves around more than the woman ever did, flipping around and pawing insolently at the walls of his cage.

Celes' hands tighten on the armrests.

She doesn't like him. She doesn't like his boots or his hat or his laughing face. She doesn't want his power, no matter how much her instructors tell her that deception is a vital part of warfare. She wants the ice back, cold and clean.

The power flowing up the tubes and into her flickers and wavers, as if it can't decide if it's there or not. There's no pure, freezing feeling to come with it, just a smokey sound in her ears and a ringing taste in her mouth. It's hard to focus her eyes anymore but Celes forces them, to answer the Esper look for look, glare for glare.

He's _laughing_ at her. He's laughing at her spinning head and the cables that twist like living snakes around her, he's laughing at the bright lights that stab and stab and the guards that tilt drunkenly at their posts, he's laughing at her and she can't stop him, can't make him stop, stop laughing _stop laughing STOP LAUGHING_ -

* * *

There are longer breaks between infusions now. Celes learns to bear the new Esper, but Cid refuses go back to the old schedule.

* * *

The guard dog's form wavers, solidifies, then finally pops into focus as an imp. It doesn't seem to know what to do with itself after that, flailing its new arms about and tipping all the water out of its head before Terra puts it out of its misery by draining it to dust.

"Useful trick, that." Celes says without emotion. She buries the useless edge of jealousy deep in her heart. Magitek is an experimental process. It's luck Terra got the ability to drain her enemies to heal her own wounds while Celes got the ability to turn things into imps. Imp transformations might even be useful one day. You never knew.

Terra just shrugs and silently cures Celes' bruises. She's been extra quiet lately, hands tucked in and eyes distant. It makes Celes uncomfortable, like she's only talking to herself, like it's her fault her frie- her training partner, is like this. There's no way Terra can read the thoughts in her head, but- Celes drags out something to say just to cover the silence. "We'll be a good team, someday! When I'm an officer, I'll make a special request to get you under my command. Your fire and my ice and we'll be invincible! Right?"

That gets a spark out of Terra, a minute brightening of the eyes and smile gone too fast to catch. "R-right," she agrees, voice soft.

It's a pity Terra isn't officer material, Celes thinks, the Empire needs more Magitek Knights in command. It's a wonder she got selected for the program at all. "Cid says my infusions should be done by the end of the year, and then I'll be able to concentrate on becoming an officer," she says, confident in her future. Almost as an afterthought, she adds "What about you?"

"Infusions?"

"The infusions to give you magic." Celes stares at Terra. From the way she said it its like she'd never heard of the word before. Had Cid not explained? "You know, what they do in the Magitek Lab, down below. It's got those Espers in tubes and they put needles in your arms to give you magic. You've been there, right?"

Terra shakes her head. "I've never- I've never needed infusions." Her eyes dart around the yard. "I'm not allowed in the Magitek Lab."

That can't be right. Celes is about to ask more, to get to the bottom of all this, when a guard interrupts to drag Tera away too soon, they hadn't finished yet, how dare he-

But there's nothing she can do against a Captain. Not as a skinny little cadet, only special because of her magic. All she can do is watch and realise, slowly, that Terra's arms were never bandaged. Always whole, as long as Celes knew her.

* * *

"But sir!"

Celes' cry falls on deaf ears. Cid shakes his head, old and weary, and refuses to look at her. "I did all I could. I'm sorry, Celes."

Her hands are fists are her sides. It's a struggle to keep her voice steady. "Professor Cid, General Kefka is not suited to command Terra. I realise he is a powerful Magitek Knight and my respected predecessor, but he- he doesn't know how to work with her like I do. His abilities don't compliment hers, and-"

"Celes!"

She reels back, startled. Cid's never raised his voice to her before. Not ever. It's like a blow.

"I did all I could," he repeats, like it means anything. "Goddess' sake, Celes, you don't know how hard I've worked to keep you a cadet and out from under him. I don't have the pull do to it twice. I'm _sorry_. I know she was your friend."

"She-" She wasn't a friend, Celes wants to protest. Cadets and future Magitek Knights don't need friends. They barely knew each other. Terra was just-

Cid's still talking. Celes hadn't realised. "-can do something later. You have a bright future, Celes. Someday, maybe..."

Celes nods, teeth grit. Someday. Someday when she's a general and Kefka's equal. Someday, when Terra will have already been serving under him for years, when Celes can finally _do something_...

...will there even be anything left?

* * *

She gets up and leaves the Magitek Lab on her own two feet. The infusions are almost complete, the power twisting beneath her skin a constant now, the whispers and flickers at the edge of her vision fading with time. She's what she wanted to be.

There are fewer Espers now - some were used up and buried, some even escaped in an incident that nearly cost Cid his position. But Celes still can't bring herself to regret seeing the last of that cat.

One turns his head to look at her as she passes, and without knowing why she stops to look. He's big, with broad shoulders and long hair. More hair covers him in tufts - a beast, not a man. An Esper. His eyes are dark and distant.

He raises a hand and Celes places hers against it without knowing why. His paw dwarfs her slim hand, and even with the glass between them Celes can feel-

There's-

It's power, power that calls to the ice in her veins but isn't just that, there's lightning and most terribly, most shivering, most longing-

Celes steps away, not afraid, she's not afraid of him, she just doesn't need to be here. His familiar, damnably familiar eyes follow her as she turns away and he clasps his hands below his chin like-

She strides away before she can find out what witchcraft he plans to lay on her.

* * *

It's cold.

Celes' boots crunch in the snow, her breath should hang in the air. This isn't what she planned.

She's apologized to Cid a thousand times since South Figaro, trying to find the words that will fly through the air to his ears. He poured his life into her, guarding her until the very end, and now she's turned against the Empire. He'll be lucky if he only loses his position.

She'd do it again. Would've done it faster if she hadn't had to protect him. If she still hadn't held out hope of saving Terra.

The woman herself paces ahead of Celes through the dim light. She has real clothes now, a bright red dress that stands out, disgustingly vivid against the coal-smeared snow of Narshe. The burly martial artist is next to her, ready to sweep her up over any drifts.

No one knows how she did it, but she got herself out from Kefka's Slave Crown. And now-

It's for the best if she doesn't remember anything, Celes tells herself. No one should have to remember that. A clean slate. It's a kindness from the triple gods.

But Celes can't stop the little rush of hope in her chest when she approaches, when Terra turns to look at her with nothing in her eyes. For those two lonely witch-girls in Vector, she hopes-

She says something about magic. It's the only thing that ever bound them together. If there's anything to jog memories free, it's that.

Terra tilts her head and for the first time since they met, she really looks at Celes.

"Can you...love another person?"


End file.
